On the street
Junk food sells
Like a blessing
Tossed in the air
And sprinkling down
Spicy and hopeful.
A few masks go by
As if in a Beckett play.
They are in a hurry
For the next act
Which will be across the road
It will be a street play.
About the end of worry
And they wonder how to smile
With the mask on.
Elsewhere, shopkeepers
Dream of open shutters
Discuss last night’s news.
No one reads newspapers these days
For the gossip.
An earnest, aware man
Elsewhere
Refuses to sleep inside his hut
He is afraid of an asteroid landing.
And feels his hut, of all the huts in the universe
Might be the one.
There is a fire lit
For the good story.
All are welcome.
Bring your own, your one good story.
A poem will do.
Silence is a good listener.
Fire kills germs
Crackles hope and shows the way
This side of the street or
The other one.
Amlanjyoti Goswami’s poetry has been published around the world, and in the anthologies 40 under 40: An Anthology of Post Globalisation Poetry (Poetrywala), A Change of Climate (Manchester Metropolitan University, Environmental Justice Foundation and the University of Edinburgh) and the Sahitya Akademi anthology of Modern English Poetry. His recent collection of poems, River Wedding, has just been published by Poetrywala and has been widely reviewed.
Featured image credit: Clark Van Der Beken/Unsplash